Day: January 18, 2018

For a species that’s conquered Earth and traveled through space and invented the Slapchop, we humans sure are insecure when it comes to technology. Our greatest fear: the singularity, when the abilities of AI and robots surpass those of humans, growing so advanced that civilization is forced to reboot as humanity spirals into existential dread. Or worse, the machines turn us into batteries, à la The Matrix.

As fun as that all sounds, UC Berkeley roboticist Ken Goldberg thinks the singularity is bunk. “I think it’s counterproductive,” he says. “I think it’s demoralizing and it’s fiction. We’re not even close to this.”

The robot revolution we are in the midst of is actually way more interesting. Goldberg calls it the multiplicity. “Multiplicity is not science fiction,” he says. “It’s something that’s happening right now, and it’s the idea of humans and machines working together.” So welcome to the future, where robotsread more

Kilopower is a small nuclear reactor that can generate a reliable power supply. Versions range from 1 kilowatt — enough to power a basic toaster — to ten kilowatts and Kilopower project researchers said in a Space.com article that around four or five of the latter would be needed to power a habitat on Mars. “Kilopower’s compact size and robustness allows us to deliver multiple units on a single lander to the surface that provides tens of kilowatts of power,” Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said during a press conference today.

Testing of the Kilopower system has gone smoothly so far and in March, the team plans to conduct a full-power test. To hear more about how Kilopower works, check out the video below.

Wine 3.0 Released
Published on January 18, 2018 at 11:40PM
prisoninmate shares a report from Softpedia: The Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) project has been updated today to version 3.0, a major release that ends 2017 in style for the open-source compatibility layer capable of running Windows apps and games on Linux-based and UNIX-like operating systems. Almost a year in the works, Wine 3.0 comes with amazing new features like an Android driver that lets users run Windows apps and games on Android-powered machines, Direct3D 11 support enabled by default for AMD Radeon and Intel GPUs, AES encryption support on macOS, Progman DDE support, and a task scheduler. In addition, Wine 3.0 introduces the ability to export registry entries with the reg.exe tool, adds various enhancements to the relay debugging and OLE data cache, as well as an extra layerread more

A man dressed in white from head to toe was posted outside the Las Vegas Convention Center last week. His outfit included just a few colorful exceptions: four bubbles in red, yellow, blue, and green splashed in the center of his T-shirt, and a fluffy red poof atop his ski cap. Those multicolored spots should look familiar to anyone who’s used Google’s virtual assistant on their smartphone. After all, those dots form the same logo that appears in the Google Assistant app.

That’s because he, like others at CES in the same attire, was dressed as the Google Assistant. The costumed characters were part of Google’s effort to give its digital helper a flashy presence at CES after Amazon’s Alexa stole the spotlight at last year’s show. Google’s efforts paid off, to some extent: This year’s conference was filled with gadgets ranging from TVs to security cameras that worked with theread more

In a dimly lit ballroom inside the MGM casino in Las Vegas earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was discussing a strange topic in front of a very eager crowd: Different species of flowers.

That may seem out of place to anyone familiar with Nvidia, a company best known for graphics processors that power everything from gaming computers to driverless cars. But Huang was illustrating how his company’s technology could use machine learning to identify and label more than 900 images of flowers in just a second.

It was a fitting way to kick off this year’s CES, the biggest tech show of the year. Many of the show’s announcements and exhibitions centered on artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in smart homes, smart cars, and smart everything. If previous CES events introduced “smart” gadgets to the world, this year’s show proved they’re here to stay.

Here’s a look at three ways AI will keep changing your life in 2018, if the gadgets andread more

In a dimly lit ballroom inside the MGM casino in Las Vegas earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was discussing a strange topic in front of a very eager crowd: Different species of flowers.

That may seem out of place to anyone familiar with Nvidia, a company best known for graphics processors that power everything from gaming computers to driverless cars. But Huang was illustrating how his company’s technology could use machine learning to identify and label more than 900 images of flowers in just a second.

It was a fitting way to kick off this year’s CES, the biggest tech show of the year. Many of the show’s announcements and exhibitions centered on artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in smart homes, smart cars, and smart everything. If previous CES events introduced “smart” gadgets to the world, this year’s show proved they’re here to stay.

Here’s a look at three ways AI will keep changing your life in 2018, if the gadgets andread more

In a dimly lit ballroom inside the MGM casino in Las Vegas earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was discussing a strange topic in front of a very eager crowd: Different species of flowers.

That may seem out of place to anyone familiar with Nvidia, a company best known for graphics processors that power everything from gaming computers to driverless cars. But Huang was illustrating how his company’s technology could use machine learning to identify and label more than 900 images of flowers in just a second.

It was a fitting way to kick off this year’s CES, the biggest tech show of the year. Many of the show’s announcements and exhibitions centered on artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in smart homes, smart cars, and smart everything. If previous CES events introduced “smart” gadgets to the world, this year’s show proved they’re here to stay.

Here’s a look at three ways AI will keep changing your life in 2018, if the gadgets andread more

Amazon Studios so far has focused on bringing a little culture to the world of exclusive video streaming.

In addition to its original content, Amazon has made a name for itself in purchasing acclaimed art-house projects that nabbed accolades at venues such as the Sundance Film Festival in the hopes of luring viewers to Prime Video with them.

Now, though, Amazon is chiefly going for the sweet cash flow associated with blockbusters, according to a new report from Reuters.

Before, the company preferred to acquire award-winning shows like Manchester by the Sea and The Big Sick for exclusive distribution, but now a source familiar with the company’s plans says it wants to “go after films with budgets in the $50 million range at the expense of indie projects costing around $5 million.”

Hints of this overall shift have been dropping often recently, particularly in the context of Amazon’s own TV series.

The latest news comes only a day, for instance, after word dropped thatread more

In a dimly lit ballroom inside the MGM casino in Las Vegas earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was discussing a strange topic in front of a very eager crowd: Different species of flowers.

That may seem out of place to anyone familiar with Nvidia, a company best known for graphics processors that power everything from gaming computers to driverless cars. But Huang was illustrating how his company’s technology could use machine learning to identify and label more than 900 images of flowers in just a second.

It was a fitting way to kick off this year’s CES, the biggest tech show of the year. Many of the show’s announcements and exhibitions centered on artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in smart homes, smart cars, and smart everything. If previous CES events introduced “smart” gadgets to the world, this year’s show proved they’re here to stay.

Here’s a look at three ways AI will keep changing your life in 2018, if the gadgets andread more